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Joan Didion
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A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.
- Joan Didion
#Forever
#Hardest
#Image
#Own
#Place
We all survive more than we think we can.
- Joan Didion
#More
#Survive
#Than
#Think
Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.
- Joan Didion
#Feel
#Strength
#Things
#Through
#Time
To believe in 'the greater good' is to operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension.
- Joan Didion
#Believe
#Ethical
#Good
#Greater Good
The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most temporary way.
- Joan Didion
#Believe
#Illusion
#Life
#Live
#Real
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.
- Joan Didion
#Down
#Only
#Things
#Useful
#Way
Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.
- Joan Didion
#Bad
#Good
#Listening
#Nobody
#Walk
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.
- Joan Didion
#Forget
#Never Forget
#Never
#Thought
The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control.
- Joan Didion
#Control
#Important
#People
#True
#Water
We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.
- Joan Didion
#Choices
#Look
#Moral
#See
#Suicide
You have to pick the places you don't walk away from.
- Joan Didion
#Away
#Pick
#Places
#Walk
#You
Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff.
- Joan Didion
#Afternoon
#Brilliant
#Doing
#Late
#Sky
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
- Joan Didion
#Dinner
#Down
#Fast
#Know
#Life
In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.' It's an aggressive, even a hostile act.
- Joan Didion
#Aggressive
#Change
#Me
#Mind
#Way
Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.
- Joan Didion
#Ear
#Grammar
#Know
#Play
#Power
The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
- Joan Didion
#Life
#Own
#Responsibility
#Self-Respect
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.
- Joan Didion
#Down
#Go
#Matter
#Research
#Sculpture
New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.
- Joan Didion
#City
#Love
#Money
#Power
#Romantic
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
- Joan Didion
#Fear
#Find
#Looking
#See
#Thinking
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 A.M. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
- Joan Didion
#Bad
#Door
#Mind
#Night
#Surprise
Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?
- Joan Didion
#Dreams
#Find
#Only
#Thought
#Writing
It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.
- Joan Didion
#Christmas
#Me
#Never
#People
#Talk
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.
- Joan Didion
#Back
#Expectations
#Free
#Great
#Power
#Respect
#Us
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